An emergency housing provider in Whangarei says life may become a little less stressful for its tenants - after a meeting with local housing officials.
The Emergency Housing Trust reported last month that it was turning homeless families away, at the rate of one a day.
It said its existing tenants were staying longer, because it was taking much longer for the bureaucracy to get them into state houses.
The trust's chair, Adrian Whale, said a meeting between the trust, Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development had clarified how people could keep their place on the ministry's social housing register.
He said there had been a tendency for officials to see people in emergency housing as less in need than people living in tents or cars - but that was not the case.